


stay young forever

by lesbianpatrick



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Age Regression, Be Careful What You Wish For, Confessions, Crack, Crack Fic, De-aging, I'm sorry beforehand, Love Confessions, M/M, don't even touch me, idek anymore, just end this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-20
Updated: 2016-05-20
Packaged: 2018-06-09 13:34:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6909505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianpatrick/pseuds/lesbianpatrick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Why the fuck are you 23?" He asks, rather eloquently. </p>
<p>"You're 18." Pete says in lieu of an actual response. </p>
<p>"I'm not-" Patrick pauses. Wait. Is he? One look down confirms that, yes, he totally is. "Oh. Okay." He pauses again, then really processes that fact. "Wait a second, what the fuck?"</p>
<p>"Yes. My thoughts exactly." Pete replies agreeably.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I DONT EVEN KNOW OK
> 
> Someone posted an age regression story so I was like "huh why do all these have the characters turning, like, 6-8 years, why not going back to older years but still much younger" (if that makes any sense) and then I kind of just. This. 
> 
> If you like it, tell me and I'll continue. (Sorry the first chapter is a bit short)
> 
> Enjoy!

Patrick sighs and rolls over in bed again so he's facing Pete. Not that Pete's in the same bed as him; no, they're just in the same hotel room. 

Not that he wishes they _were_ in the same bed or anything. 

He wonders when it got to be like this. They'd never officially been together, but they used to always act like it. Holding hands, often sharing a bed, even the occasional kiss (and no, not just on the cheek). But everything just...changed after the hiatus, and during it, for that matter. And even a bit before it. 

God, Patrick misses it. 

The no-strings-attached... _thing_ they had. He misses it so much. 

He watches as Pete sleeps, inhaling and exhaling under the lumpy hotel comforter. 

Oh, he misses it so, so much. 

He sighs and burrows into his own bed. He'll deal with everything in the morning. Or, who knows? Maybe even never!

"I wish we were young like that again." Patrick mutters to himself, gripping the sheets with both hands. "Because then this would be easy. I miss it being easy."

Then he sighs again and closes his eyes, drifting into sleep. 

Some magical creature must have been watching. Or a shooting star passed overhead at that exact moment. Or it was 11:11, or possibly 12:34. Or maybe he'd accidentally found a four leaf clover. Who knows?

The important thing is that as he slept, Patrick's wish came true. 

Patrick certainly didn't notice. 

Yet.

~*~

Patrick rolls over and mumbles something even he doesn't understand into his pillow. Something's wrong, he can feel it. It's weird, but it's (most likely) nothing he can't get away with putting off for, oh, maybe forever. 

He blinks open his eyes to see Pete's already out of bed. The covers are thrown haphazardly to one side, looking like Pete had bolted from his bed. Patrick wonders vaguely why he'd have done that. 

He distantly registers that Pete must be in the bathroom, because he can hear him muttering to himself really quickly in there about something unintelligible. Huh. That's kind of weird. Why would he be doing that?

"Pete?" Patrick calls out.

That's the effects of half-asleepness on his voice, right?

"Shit!" Comes the yelled reply, and something crashes to the floor in the hotel bathroom, causing a loud metallic _bang_. 

"What's going on?" Patrick yells back, deciding, no, that's definitely not half-asleepness making his voice weird. Hey, it only sounds a little bit off anyway. 

"Um, certainly something." Pete answers cryptically, an edge of worry to his voice. 

Patrick frowns. "By which you mean...?"

There's a clearly audible heavy sigh, and then the bathroom door pushes open, but Pete still stays inside the bathroom. "Don't even say anything."

"Why would I- _oh_." Patrick replies, because Pete has just stepped out of the bathroom, and, huh, Patrick is pretty sure he wasn't 23 last time he saw him. 

"Why the fuck are you 23?" He asks, rather eloquently. 

"You're 18." Pete says in lieu of an actual response. 

"I'm not-" Patrick pauses. Wait. Is he? One look down confirms that, yes, he totally is. "Oh. Okay." He pauses again, then really processes that fact. "Wait a second, what the fuck?"

"Yes. My thoughts exactly." Pete replies agreeably. 

Holy shit, Patrick thinks, Pete looks...wow. Patrick forgot just how...well, _wow_ Pete was when he was younger. Not that he looks bad older, just. _Wow_. 

"No one had any alcohol or anything last night, right?" Patrick asks, frowning, because that seems like a better explanation than anything else he can come up with. He's considering getting out of bed, but that would require further accepting the situation, which, no thanks. 

"Nope. Wouldn't we be hungover, anyway?" Pete shakes his head. 

"Huh." Patrick says simply. That right there is exactly how this all feels to him. _Huh_. 

"Yeah, right?" Pete moves to sit back on his own bed, and Patrick has no choice anymore but to sit up on his.

"Huh." He repeats. His clothes don't seem to sit quite right on his frame anymore. They're not too big or too small, but they're just...wrong. It's like his body isn't his, but it _is_. Again; huh. 

"Oh my god, you're so _young_!" Pete suddenly exclaims, his (suddenly 23 year old) face suddenly breaking into a wild grin. 

"Fuck off." Patrick replies harshly. 

"No." Pete says defiantly. 

And then they just sit there for a moment, the weight of what's going on right now kind of just now finally setting in. 

"Andy and Joe are going to freak out." Pete points out suddenly, breaking the almost peaceful silence. 

"Oh yeah. We should probably say something about this to them." Patrick nods slowly. God, he doesn't remember his hair having been _this_ long, but okay. 

"Yep." Pete agrees, popping the 'p' loudly. 

There's some more, more awkward, silence before Pete finally asks, "Okay, but _how_ did this even happen?"

"I don't-" Patrick begins, but oh, he _does_ know. Oh. Oops. 

"What?" Pete asks, furrowing his brow. "Patrick, what did you _do_?"

"Okay, so last night I was thinking I missed the old days, y'know?" Patrick simply neglects to mention why exactly he was thinking that. It's not really important, and he'd rather not have Pete knowing what he'd been thinking last night. "So I may have kind of said I wished that we were young like that again. Haha, whoops." 

"Wow. Great job. Now we _are_." Pete comments dryly. 

"Shut up! Wishes don't normally come true, okay? How was I supposed to know?" Patrick protests, crossing his arms. 

"Hmph." Pete crosses his arms too, but then once again suddenly breaks into a grin. "Oh my god, we need to get you a trucker hat!"

" _Pete_!" Patrick practically screams, glaring at him. 

Pete shrugs and keeps grinning. 

Patrick groans. This is going to be crazy, especially if one of them isn't going to take it seriously. 

Oh, fuck his life.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Patrick can't do death glares when he's 18 and that kind of sucks because everyone else has decided to be a dick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am very sick right now fun :)
> 
> So here, have chapter 2. In which Patrick is 99% sure the entire world hates him. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Unfortunately for Patrick, Pete discovered that he always carries one of his old hats in the bottom of his suitcase ("for _luck_ , okay?") and he had immediately pushed it onto Patrick's head to "complete the early-2000s Stump trademark look". 

Patrick didn't think that it was very funny, no matter how hard Pete laughed at it. He thought that this was a serious (and slightly embarrassing) matter, and _god, Pete, do you really expect to play a show like this without anyone noticing?_

To that, Pete had simply shrugged and asked if they had any Cheetos in the room. 

Patrick is ready to kill him. 

"Mmph." Pete says through a mouthful of Cheetos (where did he even find them?), licking Never-Found-In-Nature Orange™ Cheeto dust off his fingers. 

"What?" Patrick asks, because if if Pete was trying to say something, it was terribly lost through the Cheetos. 

"I said we should probably tell Andy and Joe." Pete repeats, this time minus the mouthful of Cheetos. 

"Oh, right. Of course." Patrick nods slowly. "That's probably a thing we should do."

There's a moment of strained silence, then someone knocks on the door. 

Patrick gives Pete a half suspicious, half death glare look, which probably doesn't come off very serious or deadly on his 18 year old face, but hey. "A" for Effort?

"Yeah, so I may have texted Joe already." Pete shrugs, grabbing his phone off the nightstand, tossing aside his half-empty Cheeto bag, and holding the phone up to show Patrick. Patrick can see he texted Joe " _hey so something happened and I can't really explain it? come over in 5?_ ", and Joe had replied " _sure_."

"Oh, fuck you." Patrick groans, his look losing all suspicion and going full-on death glare. 

"Aw, you look so cute when you're trying to look like you're going to kill me!" Pete exclaims, grinning. 

"I will actually kill you, not just look like it." Patrick hisses under his breath. He hates this. He bets he could pull off the death glare if he was 32 again. But, unfortunately for him, no luck there. 

The knock on the door repeats, more persistently this time. 

"Go get it." Pete says, giving Patrick his weird pout look, and yep, that was definitely so much more effective back in the day. 

"Fine." Patrick mutters, grudgingly following Pete's command. 

He gets up and makes his way to the door, steeling himself to open it. He slowly turns the knob, pulls the door inwards, and prepares to give anyone who laughs at him another, hopefully more effective, death glare. 

"The fuck?" Andy asks, giving Patrick a strange, unreadable look. 

"My guess was closer!" Joe announces, beaming at him.

"I don't even want to know." Patrick mutters, sighing. 

"But you're..." Andy begins, frowning.

"Yes. I am. Don't remind me." Patrick says, pulling out his best death glare. 

Unfortunately, Andy actually giggles. (Andy. Giggles. Is that even possible? Apparently.) "Okay, that's actually kind of cute."

"I swear to god." Patrick mutters, stepping aside and gesturing for Andy and Joe to enter. 

They do, stepping into the room. 

"Hey, where'd you even get the hat?" Joe asks, poking the aforementioned hat's brim. 

"I always carry one." Patrick answers, and when Joe gets this _look_ on his face, he adds, "It's for luck, shut up. Pete made me wear it. He's lucky I didn't make him wear eyeliner." Then he pauses. "Hey, wait."

"Don't you go getting ideas!" Pete calls from his bed.

Patrick walks to the end of the small hotel room hallway with Andy and Joe trailing behind to see Pete on his phone, looking like he absolutely does not care about anything else in the world right now. 

"Hi." Pete says, waving at Andy and Joe. 

"I don't know what's going on, or why you two are suddenly fourteen years younger, but it seems like something that would be Pete's fault." Andy says, pointing to Pete accusatorially as he says it. 

"Nope! It's Patrick's." Pete replies happily. He's probably just happy that for once, it wasn't him who ruined everything. 

Andy and Joe give Patrick a dubious look and Patrick groans. "I know, I know, I'm an idiot. Great."

Joe laughs. "I was going to say congrats on finally fucking something up, but okay."

"Not something to congratulate!" Patrick insists, frowning and crossing his arms. "We have a show to play tomorrow night and I am _actually 18 again, what the fuck_."

"Yeah, you're so tiny!" Pete proclaims happily, once again only butting into the conversation to bother Patrick in some way. 

"Excuse me! I'm not any shorter, I never got any taller!" Patrick says, throwing Pete another half-baked death glare. 

Pete smirks. "Exactly."

"Listen, I appreciate that you two are arguing like a married couple, but this is a legitimate problem." Andy speaks up, silencing everyone else in the room, as is the Andy Hurley Way™.

Everyone gives him a look, and Andy just shrugs. "What? I didn't say I had a plan, I just said this was serious."

"Oh, fuck you." Patrick mutters, moving to sit back on his bed. 

"Maybe it'll just wear off?" Joe suggests, shrugging. It's obvious that he could really care less. Patrick thinks he should care a little more. 

"Or maybe it won't and we'll have to just, like, wait fourteen years until we're naturally back to normal." Pete says, eyes still focused on the screen of his phone instead of anyone else in the room. 

"Exactly!" Joe nods, grinning at Pete. "So it'll wear off in fourteen years!"

"Fuck you." Patrick repeats, louder this time. 

"Hey. Hey Andy." Joe says, getting this look on his face that can't mean anything good, and Patrick doesn't even want to know. "I think the _teenager_ is trying to argue with us."

Andy gets a weird cross between a just-about-to-laugh smile and a venomous glare on his face, but he doesn't say anything in response to Joe. 

Patrick, however, says quite a lot. "Alright, that's it, you two are out of here, we can fix this on our own, that was literally the rudest thing ever, so fuck you."

He immediately gets up and pushes Joe and Andy back through the still slightly askew door, and adds, "By the way, I'm technically legally an adult." before slamming it in their faces. 

"Wow." Pete says, still not having moved from his bed. 

"Yeah, and fuck you too." Patrick replies, pivoting on his heels and making his way back to his bed, not planning on getting up this time. 

"Mhm, go ahead." Pete mutters, only half paying attention. 

Patrick raises a questioning eyebrow, but Pete doesn't see it. He sighs and turns on the TV instead. 

"Ooh, Chopped is on!" Pete exclaims, dropping his phone. Oh, so _now_ he cares about his exterior surroundings. 

"Yeah, you enjoy that." Patrick mumbles, scooting back into his pillows. 

He is actually going to _kill_ Pete.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even fucking know this is my life now don't even touch me


End file.
